PCSpecialist Nebula Ultra R review: a great-value RTX 5080 system

Stock shortages be damned, prebuilt PCs featuring GeForce RTX 5080 graphics cards are hitting the market like clockwork. Fitting one into PCSpecialist Nebula Ultra R, the system integrator has a compelling contender with enough value that the rig is worth it even when newly-minted models finally become available once again.

PCSpecialist Nebula Ultra R

£2,299.00

Pros

• Excellent price
• Great CPU and GPU performance
• Impressively quiet under load
• Solid temperature management
• Three-year warranty

Cons

• Underwhelming rear I/O
• Mediocre SSD speeds

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How we test and review products.

There’s plenty to love about this rig, particularly when in the price-to-performance ring. In a deft balancing act, PCSpecialist curates a relatively inexpensive system that punches above its weight in most respects. This is a prebuilt that should be on the radar of all those in search of a new high-end PC.

Specifications

The main draw of Nebula Ultra R is undoubtedly its Zotac GeForce RTX 5080 Solid OC, both for its fresh face and rarity as a solo component. It’s a smart choice on PCSpecialist’s part, as it doesn’t stray far from Nvidia’s $999 MSRP, helping to keep the total cost of the system down. The card’s understated design doesn’t hurt either, as a grey body, gold accents, and tasteful RGB LEDs lend its large cooler an air of class.

Core Ultra 7 265KF picks up processing duties, bringing 20 cores and threads to the table. Like GeForce RTX 5080, it’s the stepdown model from the flagship of its family. However, it by no means disappears under the shadow of its sibling and packs enough punch to keep steady pace with its pixel pushing partner at QHD and UHD resolutions. FHD gaming is certainly possible with this pairing but the constraints of the CPU become much more apparent as bottlenecks manifest.

While PCSpecialist builds the majority of Nebula Ultra R with off-the-shelf components, the brand tags in its own FrostFlow 200 Series air cooler to manage CPU temperatures. Its two fans and large black heatsink do an ample job of keeping Intel’s chip nice and cool under load.

Flanking the system’s processor is 32GB of Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5-6000 running in a dual channel configuration with a CL36 CAS latency. This isn’t the fastest kit on the market, but these sticks are plenty fast for their processor pairing and continue PCSpecialist’s mantra of balancing performance value with Nebula Ultra R.

2TB of NVMe storage is a welcome feather in this system’s proverbial cap but its speed is a clear weak point of this system. Despite boasting a PCIe Gen 4 interface, Solidigm P41 Plus performs closer to a Gen 3 drive. If you’re a creative that regularly handles large files then I’d suggest swapping it out for a speedier SSD but, to the drive’s credit, it’s more than capable of delivering a zippy system and short load times in games.

PCSpecialist’s choice of motherboard for Nebula Ultra R, namely an Asus Prime Z890-P WiFi, leaves me feeling similarly mixed. It features all the trimmings of Intel’s latest platform, the standout being Thunderbolt 4, but carries an underwhelming selection of USB ports. Four USB 2.0 inputs outnumber a single 10Gb/s header and two 5Gb/s . I’d much prefer to see the likes of ASRock’s Lightning WiFi in its place, available at a similar price and offering more ports that are collectively faster to boot.

Rounding off this rig’s internal components is a Corsair RM850x power supply. PCSpecialist puts the PSU’s modular form factor to good use through impressively-tidy cable management. There’s nary a wire out of place making for a clean finish that’s hard not to admire through tempered glass or with side panels removed. ATX 3.1 compliance helps with this effect too, removing the need for unsightly PCIe 8-pin dongles in favour of a sleeker 16-pin 12V-2×6 cable to feed GeForce RTX 5080.

Nebula Ultra R takes shape in be quiet! Shadow Base 800 FX, a case than I and other members of the Club386 team are keen on. It arrives with a generous helping of four Light Wing fans that near-silently provision the system with a healthy airflow within the chassis’ amply-sized chamber. The rings of RGB surrounding each fan combined with the case’s LED strips and internal components come together to create a lovely show of lights that contrast nicely against its black finish.

All in all, Nebula Ultra R boasts a solid set of specifications but what impresses me most is PCSpecialist’s asking price of £2,299. Putting this system together yourself (swapping its cooler for a comparable alternative) would cost around £2,336 according to my quickly-populated PCPartPicker build. That’s assuming you can find a Zotac GeForce RTX 5080 Solid OC at MSRP of course but you’d probably have more luck in search of a leprechaun.

Considering that its asking price also nets you a three-year standard warranty, it’s difficult to argue against the value of the package as a whole.

Performance

Nebula Ultra R is the first prebuilt featuring a GeForce RTX 5080 to pass through the Club386 test suite, potentially providing it an advantage in benchmarks relating to the GPU. Its Core Ultra 7 265K processor also benefits from the various fixes deployed by Intel to address Arrow Lake performance.

Unlike prior reviews, there’s been no need to switch from the default Windows ‘Balanced’ power plan. I’m also happy to report that PCSpecialist ships this system with XMP enabled by default, so there’s no need to dive into the BIOS to get the most out of its RAM.

Here are the specifications of each system that I’ll be comparing Nebula Ultra R to, along with links to their respective reviews:

• CyberpowerPC UK Infinity Z890 Pro
  • Intel Core Ultra 7 265K
  • MSI Z890 Gaming Plus WiFi
  • Nvidia RTX 4070 Super
  • 16GB DDR5-5200
  • 2TB Kingston Fury Renegade
• PCSpecialist Nebula Supreme R
  • Intel Core Ultra 7 265K
  • Gigabyte Z890 Eagle WiFi 7
  • Nvidia RTX 4080 Super
  • 32GB DDR5-5600
  • 2TB Samsung 990 Pro
• PCSpecialist Helio Elite
  • AMD Ryzen 5 9600X
  • Asus Prime B650-Plus
  • Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti 16GB
  • 16GB DDR5-5200
  • 1TB Samsung 990 Evo
• CyberpowerPC UK Ultra R99 Pro
  • AMD Ryzen 9 9900X
  • MSI MAG X670E Tomahawk WiFi
  • Nvidia RTX 4090
  • 32GB DDR5-6400
  • 2TB WD_Black SN850X
• Corsair One i500
  • Intel Core i9-14900K
  • MSI MAG B760M Mortar WiFi
  • Nvidia RTX 4090
  • 64GB DDR5-6000
  • 2TB Gen 4 NVMe

CPU

Leading the pack in single core performance and just a few points shy of a water-cooled Core i9-14900K in multi core is an impressive result for Core Ultra 7 265K. A combination of faster RAM and patches undoubtedly play their part in pushing Nebula Ultra R ahead of Infinity Z890 Pro and Nebula Supreme R despite all three systems sharing the same CPU.

It’s important to note that the processor doesn’t support hyperthreading, unlike its competition. This could affect performance in other applications but has no negative effect in Cinebench 2024.

Intel remains the only processor manufacturer to offer Neural Processing Units (NPUs) part and parcel with its chips, including Core Ultra 7 265K. Running the same AI workload on the CPU and NPU showcases the strength of the latter, more than doubling the former’s half precision score.

Given the power of GeForce RTX 5080 is vastly greater than Core Ultra 7 265K’s NPU, you’re more likely to rely on your graphics card for intense AI tasks. However, for less-demanding workloads the addition is a welcome one as it requires little power to drive.

RAM

Memory latency remains a problem with Intel’s LGA1851 processors, landing Nebula Ultra R in the bottom half of the bar chart and creating a significant gap between it and third place. The faster speed of its RAM helps keep it above other Core Ultra 7 265K systems but not by much.

The prospects of the system are much rosier as far as bandwidth is concerned, netting the PC a bronze medal. Should you wish to push this rig’s memory performance further then there’s room to grow via a couple of CUDIMM modules.

Storage

It comes as no surprise that Nebula Ultra R trails behind its peers in CrystalDiskMark. The relatively slow speeds of its SSD see it come last in both sequential read and write benchmarks with respective scores of 4,128MB/s and 3,329MB/s.

Apps

Much of PCMark 10’s scoring correlates to SSD performance, leaving PCSpecialist Nebula Ultra once again the rear of the pack. Thankfully, its fast RAM and beefy GPU help plug the gap so the system isn’t massively behind.

Gaming

3DMark Time Spy showcases the rasterised rendering power of GeForce RTX 5080, managing to skirt past GeForce RTX 4090 by just under 100 points. However, this indicates a victory for Core Ultra 7 285K over Ryzen 9 9900X more than anything else. Swap in a water-cooled Core i9-14900K and Nvidia’s last-generation flagship storms ahead to the tune of a several thousand.

I put Nebula Ultra R to the test in 3DMark Speed Way and Steel Nomad, in which it respectively scored 8,995 and 8,332. These results aren’t far off a GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition running alongside a Ryzen 9 7950X3D, smashing stuff.

As I alluded to earlier in this review, Nebula Ultra R shines brightest at higher resolutions, namely QHD and UHD. Across the entire gaming test suite bar one instance, the system was able to fire off average frame rates well above 60fps at native 2160p using each title’s maximum settings. Even the exceptional result, namely Forza Motorsport, was only short by 2fps which you can easily address by engaging DLSS Super Resolution.

Switching down to QHD leaves room for frame rates above 150fps, sometimes north of 200fps, in many games without the assistance of upscaling. Core Ultra 7 285K begins create bottlenecks at FHD, however, as the likes of Assassin’s Creed Mirage don’t see a major uplift in performance despite running at a lower resolution. This isn’t always the case but its potential is worth bearing in mind.

In addition to higher base performance, part of GeForce RTX 5080’s appeal lies in its support for Multi Frame Generation. Support for the feature is already widespread and will continue to grow via native implementations but you can also override existing DLSS 3 games with the tech via the Nvidia App.

Based on the results above, I wouldn’t engage frame generation on GeForce RTX 5080 and by extension Nebula Ultra R beyond QHD if you’re running DLSS at Quality. This technology requires a base frame rate of at least 60fps to combat latency woes. Still, with a few tweaks, UHD with 4x FG is certainly on the table here.

Vitals

As expected, Core Ultra 7 285K at the heart of Nebula Ultra R doesn’t guzzle an exorbitant amount of watts while idle or under load. Pushing the system further in games naturally sees power consumption rise, but even Cyberpunk 2077 running with every bell-and-whistle only pushes results up to 446W.

There’s no risk of GPU thermal throttling under load in Nebula Ultra R, as its Zotac GeForce RTX 5080 Solid OC coasts with a cool 60°C.

CPU temperatures are on the warmer side at 72°C but this is by no means a point of concern. In fact, it’s downright agreeable considering the system’s acoustics.

be quiet! by name, be quiet by nature. Nebula Ultra R is in a class of its own when it comes to system noise undoubtedly in part due to its choice of case and fans.

Higher frame rates on this system do cause some audible coil whine but it’s nothing a headset can’t block out.

Conclusion

PCSpecialist crafts a great system with Nebula Ultra R. It delivers the highs of GeForce RTX 5080 performance without breaking a sweat or offending your ears, packaged in tow with a generally strong set of specifications.

While I do wish its SSD were of a higher calibre, it’s simple and inexpensive enough to slot an additional drive into the PC. However, addressing the shortcomings of the rig’s USB bandwidth isn’t really possible without swapping out the motherboard entirely.

Despite these weaknesses, Nebula Ultra R’s strengths handily outweigh them when combined with its extremely reasonable £2,299 price tag. This PC offers a generally high-standard of quality and value out the wazoo and comes firmly recommended.